Natural Law

"What have you done to me?" he demanded. "I gave birth to you." p.228, Dune.

Al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd and Ibn al-Arabi were only partially correct when they said that there were two kinds of truths, one for the masses and one for the learned and that the truth of the learned should be witheld from the masses.

What they should have said was that there is no need to withold the truth from the masses because the masses will withold it from themselves.

However, perhaps if they had understood their Prophet more deeply they would have understood why when he was reported to have said;

"If the hour comes while one of you is holding a palm-seedling, if he can plant it before the hour overtakes him, he should plant it."

Truly, "only the ordinary man is great."


Sleiman

Sell-in' or sell-out

I recently went to check out Mel, Kel and Will's exhibition at Global Galleries, Paddington, Sydney (check it out if you have time).

The work is particularly interesting and, most importnatly differs across artists so there is a real choice for everyone (OK - enough of the blatant plugs)

Anyway...so I had a chat to Mel and Kel at the opening about what their works were about, the general premise or theme of their works and how they came to translate those into pieces. What I found, as someone who is not particularly creative, was that the more I heard the stories, the more I felt an affinity with the works.

It led me to the conclusion that purchasing art is a form of aspirational consumption. I think that art is generally not bought by the creative, but by those who are envious of the artists ability to create the art. Actually, I don't think it's the ability to create the art itself but the ability to first have the creative inspiration then convert that into something tangible that forms the basis of the aspiration. (Remember Newton's Law of gravity seems so simple AFTER you've heard it)

As a result, the "story" behind the creation of the tangible piece becomes as important as the finished artwork itself.

So - in true marketing style, I told Mel and Kel they should put the stories near the artworks, i.e. give people something interesting to tell their dinner guests about the artwork.

After i went home it dawned on me that that could very well be promoting "selling out". After all, what artist wants to produce art that can only be appreciated after it has been explained?

But an artist has to get paid, right?

So where is the balance between selling and sellin' out? If you had to sell out to gain the notoriety necessary to get your non-sell out work to the market would you do it?

Or just to live? Would you sell out to be able to maintain your profession as an artist or would you rather not produce art at all?

I guess that's almost an "indecent proposal" and that Sleiman is going to quote Chuck D - but I thought I'd ask anyway...